Animal Health

* IPO, rather than outright sale, would avert stiff taxes * New company to be called Zoetis, had $4.2 bln rev last year * Pfizer shares up 0.8 percent By Ransdell Pierson June 7 (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc plans to separate its animal health unit into a standalone company, a move Wall Street expected as the largest U.S. drugmaker focuses more intently on its core pharmaceuticals business. Pfizer said on Thursday that preparations were underway for a public...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bayer said it was looking for opportunities to expand its in animal health unit, even after it agreed to buy Merck & Co's non-prescription drugs business for $14.2 billion. "We have a good animal health business and we would like to get bigger and stronger," Chief Executive Marijn Dekkers told analysts in a conference call on Tuesday. "There are things happening in the animal health market that we are closely observing. " Novartis last...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bayer agreed to buy Teva Pharmaceutical's U.S. animal health operations for up to $145 million to bolster its own veterinary drugs business. The price includes an upfront payment of $60 million and $85 million in milestone payments linked to manufacturing and sales targets, the German drugmaker said on Friday. Bayer expects to close the deal 2013, once it gains antitrust and regulatory clearance. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger)

(Reuters) - Shares of Phibro Animal Health Corp , backed by British private equity company 3i, rose as much as 10 percent in their market debut, valuing the company at nearly $624 million. The animal health product maker's IPO raised about $176.5 million from the offering of 11.8 million class A shares, which were priced at $15 per share, slightly below the expected range of $16-$18 per share. The Teaneck, New Jersey-based company sold 7.3 million shares, while the rest...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co's chief executive said his company had no intention of following Pfizer's lead by spinning off or selling the company's lucrative Elanco animal health unit. "We're comfortable with that business and we're going to keep it," Lilly CEO John Lechleiter said definitively on Monday during a question and answer session at the BIO CEO & Investor conference in New York. Pfizer earlier this month spun off its animal health business...

BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) - Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez is taking a hard look at the drugmaker's smaller businesses as he reshapes the company for what he expects to be a "brutal" new era in healthcare spending. At least one of the three sub-scale units - animal health, vaccines and over-the-counter medicines - is not expected to make the cut, he told Reuters in the clearest indication yet of how the review is progressing. "I really wish we could make all...

Two mergers worth more than $400 million each, one in animal health care and one in insurance, were announced Monday. In the first, Schering-Plough Corp. agreed to buy St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Inc.'s veterinary medicine unit for $405 million in cash, the third large deal in the industry since December. The combined company will become the sixth-largest animal-health business, with annual sales of about $650 million, said Schering-Plough, based in Madison, N.J. The acquisition will combine Mallinckrodt...

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co, one of the biggest U.S. drugmakers, said on Monday it would buy Germany's privately held Lohmann Animal Health for an undisclosed sum in a move to grow its animal vaccine business. Lilly lowered its financial outlook for 2014 because of the transaction, saying it needed to factor in accounting adjustments and other costs. It trimmed its estimated earnings to a range of $2.72 to $2.80 per share, down 5 cents per share. ...

* Buys U.S. vaccine specialist Newport Laboratories * No financial details given PARIS, April 2 (Reuters) - French drugmaker Sanofi on Monday it has acquired Newport Laboratories, a privately held U.S. specialist in swine and bovine vaccines, to bolster its animal health unit Merial. No financial details were given. The acquisition will enable Merial to expand its U.S. cow and pig vaccine business, Sanofi said. Newport specialises in autogenous...

By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran NEW YORK, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc has received approaches from large consumer companies interested in buying its consumer healthcare business, best known for Coppertone sunscreen and Claritin allergy medicine, according to people familiar with the matter. Merck's consumer healthcare business, which also includes Dr. Scholl's foot care and other consumer products, could be worth as much as $8 billion to $10...

Animal health business being sold: Belgian chemicals group Solvay S.A. said Friday that it would sell its worldwide animal health businesses to American Home Products Corp. for $449 million. Solvay said its sale of the unit to the Madison, N.J.-based drug and health care products company will net it a pre-tax capital gain of around $192 million. Solvay said it plans to acquire U.S. human pharmaceutical product lines or companies. It said it already has made some...

By Ludwig Burger and Frank Siebelt FRANKFURT, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Switzerland's Novartis is letting Bayer and other rivals have a look into the books of its animal health business to whet prospective buyers' appetite for the unit, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The financial sources said the suitors were conducting a due diligence assessment of the Novartis business. Combining Bayer's roughly $1.7 billion in veterinary drugs ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Cargill Inc, the United State's third-largest meat producer, said more testing needs to be done on Zilmax and the last cattle fed with the feed additive will be out of its production supply by the end of September. Zilmax became the focus of attention in the livestock industry after Tyson Foods Inc said on August 7 that it will stop buying Zilmax-fed cattle for slaughter beginning next month. Tyson, the biggest U.S. meat processor, said...

International Minerals & Chemical Corp. of Northbrook said Monday it signed a letter of intent to acquire Pitman-Moore, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Pitman-Moore markets pharmaceutical, biological, diagnostic and surgical products to the animal health market and represented Johnson & Johnson's only animal health care division. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. "We wanted to focus more on products for human health care and thought the arrangement with IMC would...

WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has upgraded the United States' risk classification for mad cow disease to "negligible" from "controlled," the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday. OIE's move came at the group's annual meeting in Paris. The new ranking puts the United States among those countries said to have the lowest risk for the fatal, brain-wasting disease formally known as bovine spongiform...

More than 80 cows have been slaughtered and hundreds of others tested after the discovery that a central Wisconsin dairy heifer had a deadly, contagious lung disease, state Veterinarian Tom Howard said Tuesday. "I am well convinced that we are not going to find any other infected animals associated with this heifer," he said in a telephone interview from Madison. However, Howard said he expects that, once the probe to find the source of the bovine tuberculosis wraps up, several livestock dealers...

* Sees continued growth in animal health sales * Not likely to make push into orphan drugs * Believes amyloid plaques best target for Alzheimer's drugs By Bill Berkrot NEW YORK, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co's chief executive said his company had no intention of following Pfizer's lead by spinning off or selling the company's lucrative Elanco animal health unit. "We're comfortable with that business and we're going to keep it," Lilly CEO...